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The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.

William James

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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Loses
Cowardice
Desire
Chief
Fear
Chiefs
Corruption
Gain
Gains
Wealth
Lose
Breeders

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Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
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There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
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Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.
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Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes spiritualism means theaffirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.
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There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
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The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.
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Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
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An enormous mass of experience, both of homeopathic doctors and their patients, is invoked in favor of the efficacy of these remedies and doses.
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Man can change his life simply by changing his attitude.
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Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
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In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut each others throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing a modus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.
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Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.
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Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses power of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.
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Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.
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Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
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Wisdom is learning what to overlook.
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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
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The power to move the world is in the subconcious mind
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